Daft Property - Irish Property News

Just how low can the market go? Research suggests the bottom is still some time away... Ronan Lyons of Daft.ie: 'The pace of the decline in house prices is gradually slowing' Sunnyside, The Burnaby, Greystones, sold at auction last week for €910,000 (€260,000 over the AMV) 65 Swilly Road, Dublin 7, a three-bed terrace with architect-designed rear extension, new to the market through Sherry FitzGerald for €295,000 Judging by the number of comments on the property page of the Sunday Tribune online, nothing gets readers reaching for the keyboard quite like that most contentious of topics – house prices. Then, to really get their goat, along came last week's headline in the Irish Times referring to a report on the European housing market by Standard and Poor...

The fundamentals of the Irish housing market point to more sharp falls over the next two to three years... WITH HOUSE prices falling fast and likely, come the autumn, to fall even faster, no sane person would currently even think of buying a house. But this immediately raises the question of how long the crash will last. In other words, how long will it be before you can buy a house and not regret the decision for the rest of your life? Looking at past collapses in house prices abroad, we can see that they fall into two broad groups. In the first group, that includes Japan and Switzerland, prices suffered a long, slow decline of a few per cent a year for a decade. The second group, that includes the Netherlands and Finland, saw real prices halve in three to four years, and then fall gently for a few more years. If this second pattern repeats in Ireland, given that we are already one year into the crash, we can expect two to three more years of sharp falls. After that, prices should sta...